Generally, for inter-terminal P2P communication in a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) system or an ad-hoc system, terminals capable of P2P communication are detected through a broadcasting process without a separate grouping process.
That is, a P2P communication terminal, desiring P2P communication, broadcasts a communication request message to check whether P2P communication is possible. Adjacent target P2P terminals, having received the communication request message from the P2P communication terminal, check whether P2P communication with the P2P communication terminal is possible, and send a communication possible message to the P2P communication terminal. Then P2P communication is enabled between the P2P communication terminal and the target P2P terminals.
Meanwhile, in a current cellular system, only communication between a base station and terminals is performed, but P2P communication between the terminals is not performed. Information about the allocation of data exchanged between the base station and the terminals is made known via control information within a MAC frame, and a user checks the control information, and receives data from the base station or and sends data to the base station. Accordingly, in the cellular system, it can be seen that the base station manages all of the data transmission in the system.
When a P2P communication terminal searches for target P2P terminals through broadcasting, as in the wireless LAN system or an ad-hoc system, in the case where such a cellular system supports P2P communication, problems arise in that the power consumption of terminals and interference in the system increase, thereby degrading the overall performance of the system.
Meanwhile, in a current cellular system, no separate MAC frame for P2P communication is defined, and thus a base station must manage P2P communication using an existing MAC frame. In this case, problems arise in that the overhead of the base station is increased and the performance of the system is degraded due to the exchange of P2P management messages between the base station and the terminals.